Transcript
Hey everyone, this is Meghan from Coffee & Wizards. Today I’m here to talk about this book: Awkward by Marni Bates. It is a contemporary romance novel, and I was initially drawn to it because it is about a Youtube star. I am a huge fan of Youtube, obviously, so it was just interesting getting to see a kind of behind the scenes look at the Youtube star.
Awkward has so many pop culture references: there’s a Firefly reference in there. Just a whole bunch of pop culture references that I understood as my interests lie in the nerd kind of area. That was kind of nice. It’s definitely something that will become dated super, super quickly, so if you’re planning on reading Awkward, I would say do it sooner rather than later.
There’s a lot of different plot lines going along in Awkward: there’s Mackenzie’s stardom, there’s Mackenzie’s romance, there’s her friendships, there’s her family issues. And I thought that it was nice that there were so many plots going on because they all add up to make this three-dimensional character, but a lot of these plots were dropped part way through the novel. For example, the parent plot was very unfinished. Instead the romance side was focused on, which is fine, but if you’re going to make the family aspect such an important part in the beginning of the story and have, like, huge emphasis at parts, you need to give some sort of conclusion to that plot line. There is a sequel, but it’s from a different person’s perspective, so I don’t know how that would be resolved at all.
I also had some issues with the character of Mackenzie herself. She’s practically perfect in every way except for the social awkwardness. This girl is gorgeous! Oh, and she’s also super smart, super dedicated, and she has a beautiful singing voice without having taken any sort of lessons in the past. Sure there are girls out there who are beautiful and super smart and have singing voices too… It’s mostly the singing one that bugs me. Doesn’t singing come with practice? Isn’t it the kind of thing that you can’t just be like, “Oh, I’m gonna go up on stage and perform with the top band of the world.” Like, that just seems like something that’s not practical.
So thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this, don’t forget to subscribe. Contact info down there. If you’ve read Awkward by Marni Bates, or any of her other novels, be sure to let me know down below in the comments. And if you know of any other books that focus on things like Youtube or Twitter, let me know because I would kind of be interested to know how that was integrated into the story. So I will see you guys soon. Bye.
Don’t just take my word for it!
” I love these types of books, they aren’t the most literary, but are definitely comfortable reads, perfect for a distressing day where you NEED to just lose yourself in the pages.” – April @ Good Books and Good Wine
“AWKWARD is all of the things that I love about contemporary YA” – Amy @ Tripping Over Books
coffeeandwizards 